Chapter One
Giles Everhart Langley, third Marquess of Bromton, tenth Earl of Strathe, and twelfth Baron Langley, ignored his friends Lord Farring and Lord Rayne. Instead, he studied Lord Markham, the most recent addition to the rakish quartet better known in gaming hells by their card-suit sobriquets—Spades, Clubs, Diamonds, and Hearts.
Markham’s omnipresent smirk vanished, and his already pale skin turned to paste—not the reaction Bromton expected.
“Put the card down, Markham,” he said.
Without a word, Markham dropped an ace of spades over his existing ten.
“Vingt-et-un!”Rayne’s fist hit the table. “Devil take it.Hearts won.”
“So it seems,” Markham replied.
“So it seems?” Farring pushed his glasses up his nose and chuckled. Dragging his pipe from his mouth he urged, “Unfold Brom’s vowel, would you?”
Markham met Bromton’s gaze. “Your calm is unnatural,Spades.”
“Go on.” Smoke swirled as Farring gestured. “When does Spadeseverbetray his sentiments?”
“Listen to Clubs—Brom is a paragon of control.” Rayne eased back into his chair. “Just like his departed father.” A single diamond sparkled in Rayne’s cravat—a nod to his card-suit name.
“I suggested secret bets.” Bromton shrugged. “To begrudge them now would be,” he paused, “dishonorable.”
Markham rubbed the side of his finger against his lip. “It’s a damned odd way to play.”
“Get on with it, pup,” Rayne said. “You’ve been lucky enough to play a master and win.”
“Yes,” Farring snorted. “Whatever Spades wagered is undoubtedly up-to-scratch.”
Bromton’s inhale stung with smoke. Only everything he owned.
Rather, everything belonging to the late marquess’strueheir.
“Go ahead, Markham.” A dark edge cut through his voice. “My vowel is yours.”
“If Markham won’t read it,” Rayne plucked the correct sheet from the cuts of parchment, “I will.”
Bromton stood. In a moment, his friends would know he no longer belonged. What only he knew was that he never had.
“Gentlemen, I bid you good night. Markham, we will discuss details on the morrow.” He pivoted and then strode toward his study.
His study, at least, for the remainder of the night.
So, he’d planted the card. Was planting a card even cheating when one was playing to lose? Damn the question. Now was not the time for doubt. Not when he’d delivered justice.
Finally.
His mother’s words rattled like cutlery in his ears.“Langley name and Bromton honor—you haven’t the right to forbid my marriage in their name. You’ve grown cold with power, but your power is a lie.Mylie. You are not the Marquess’s son.”
After she’d singed his soul with bastardy’s shame, she’d begged,“Bromton, you must understand. Had I failed to bear a child, the title would have ceased. I had to conceive by any means.”
But he couldn’t understand, any more than he could forgive.
Long before he’d been fitted into the Bromton parliamentary robes, he’d been stitched into the privileges and encumbrances of the title—drilled to sacrifice for the name’s dignity and honor.
Langley name and Bromton legacy were twin monuments shadowing every hour of his life, without which he was nothing. And his mother shattered those pillars of power and precedence, leaving him to haunt Bromton Castle under portrait after portrait of venerated ancestors he could no longer claim while hellhounds howled at his heels.
From the start, options capable of restoring proper order had been few.
